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Zeeland East High School student Allie Delost has always loved to run.

It started with neighborhood fun runs as a 3-year-old and, by fifth grade, it blossomed into competitive running.

“I really enjoyed it and I was one of the faster kids,” she said. “I could keep up with the boys.”

Later, she found her calling in track and field.

“I love the feeling of the wind in my hair, the crowd yelling,” Allie said. “I love it when the gun goes off. I just love the adrenaline rush that I get from it.”

In January, however, that excitement came to an abrupt halt when she suffered a severe hamstring injury.

It happened in a single stride.

“We were doing winter indoor training, and we were at the end of our sprint set,” Zeeland East High School track coach Lars Draeger said. “She was getting some good top-end speed, popping her knees up, but then she pulled through and went down really hard on the ground.

“Going over to her, I could see an avulsion on the back of her leg and just knew we had to get her to the hospital to get her stabilized.”

Draeger carried Allie to his car and drove her to Spectrum Health Zeeland Community Hospital, where the care team met Allie and her parents.

The diagnosis: a hamstring tear.

It would require extensive physical therapy.

“When it first happened, my initial reaction was, ‘I can’t believe this, I’ve worked really hard,’” Allie said. “I guess I over-strided a little bit. I felt it shift and felt it pop over the other ligament.”

When they returned home, Angie, Allie’s mother, could see her disappointment.

“She couldn’t put any weight on it and she was crying,” Angie said. “It hurt really bad. I think she felt kind of hopeless, as she was so excited and the season was starting.”

“I was super excited to run at Zeeland, not only because it was going to be my first year, but because of the reputation Zeeland has built for girls track and field,” Allie said. “I had a bunch of goals to come in and really help the program and genuinely get to know the girls.”

Pep talk

Not long before Allie’s injury, the Delost family had moved to Zeeland, Michigan, from Metamora, Illinois.

Allie was just getting into the swing of things as a junior at East Zeeland High School.

With this type of injury, she knew she’d have to table her goals for the indoor track season and instead focus on healing in time for outdoor track.

“It was really sad to think my dreams were going to be put aside for an entire track season,” she said. “It’s hard when you love something as much as I love track, to have to stay on the sidelines.”

She soon met with Zeeland Community Hospital physical therapist Eric Hamilton. She had already worked with him a few months prior for some chronic tendonitis in her ankle.

Hamilton quickly helped her put things into perspective.

“He said, ‘If you genuinely want this and if you want to work hard enough for this—if you want it bad enough—you can do this,’” Allie said. “He did a really good job of making me feel like, at the end of the day, I did have control over a lot more things than I thought I did.”

While she wouldn’t be able to run for a few weeks, she could accomplish other things.

“Eric definitely kept me moving,” Allie said. “I stretched every day. There were some funky stretches that stretched different parts of my hamstring that I hadn’t stretched before. It was great.”

Hamilton helped her set goals, too.

“Eventually, the goal was to qualify for state,” Allie said. “Then, after that, the goal was to place at state.”

Hamilton used blood-flow restriction techniques to build muscle, as well massages, dry needling and electrical stimulation. He helped Allie follow exercises that replicated movements she’d use in track.

“We have the equipment to make it feel like she was running track again, which helps with the buy-in,” Hamilton said.

He also used a pain-tolerated exercise approach, allowing Allie to feel some pain while her hamstring healed.

“I think in the end, it showed her you can push through some stuff and it’s not going to make it worse—it’s actually going to make it stronger, because we have to build that muscle back up to handle the stress and load,” Hamilton said.

They started with isometrics, then moved to full range of motion, then weighted movements. They later advanced to more biometrics and speed drills related to track and field movements.

At Spectrum Health outpatient rehabilitation – Zeeland, Allie practiced using runner’s blocks, simulating a race-type atmosphere.

“We can prep them as much as we can for the actual day,” Hamilton said.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Hamilton worked with Draeger and school athletic trainer Katie Putnam to develop a plan to get Allie healthy in time for her outdoor track season as a junior.

They targeted key races toward the end of the school year.

On their calendars, they all circled June 4, 2022.

The date of state finals.

As a team, they followed the plan.

“With Eric’s knowledge and expertise, he’s phenomenal,” Draeger said. “The cooperation we have between Eric and myself, the trainer and her parents, the rehab was very smooth.”

Allie’s mom could see it all come together.

“There was this mutual respect and collaboration amongst the team,” Angie said. “And Eric went above and beyond to ensure there was really great communication so she could have a good outcome.”

Also in Allie’s corner is her father, Matt, her brother, Ben, and the family’s two rescue dogs, Saffy and Liza Jane.

“I like hanging out with my dogs. They’re always reliable,” Allie said. “With my injury, they would lick my hamstring like they could tell something was wrong. They were a big part in helping me stay positive.”

Her faith buoyed her, too.

“We prayed a lot,” she said. “We know there’s a reason for everything and there’s a reason God put this challenge in front of me.

“If I can share my story and help other athletes, there’s always a reason for stuff. And we just believed there was going to be a reason for this—and the outcome was going to be good.”

‘She’s a tough kid’

With aspirations to run track in college, Allie knew that her performances in her junior and senior years would be important. She put full faith in Hamilton’s approaches.

“I tell my patients to trust me and trust the process,” Hamilton said. “She really did that. We were able to get her quickly back.”

Allie met with her trainer every day and followed the regimen.

“She’s a tough kid,” Hamilton said. “I was able to push her probably more than I would be able to push other people.”

Added Draeger: “She’s one of those girls who just wants to work, work, work. She has good leadership skills. Leading by example is one of her strong points. She always wants to be at the front of the pack with whatever drill we’re doing.”

Hamilton also worked to help Allie build confidence in all aspects of healing.

“As much as it’s physical therapy, what people don’t understand a lot of times, the mental side of it is important,” Hamilton said. “Especially nursing something that maybe, in their mind, is something they may reinjure at any moment.”

With sprinters, especially, hamstrings can be delicate.

“We prepped her as much as we could to show her that she could do this and her hamstring can take it, and her body can take it and she was ready to go,” Hamilton said. “That gave her a lot of confidence going into races.

“I told her every Friday, ‘Just go rip it’—to just go for it.”

‘Going to state is amazing’

Rip it, she did.

Competing in the outdoor track season in her junior year, Allie went on to break Zeeland East girls track records in five events: the 60-meter dash, 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash and the 4×100 and 4×200 meter relays.

Hamilton would check her results online after each track meet.

“I was as pumped for her as she was probably,” he said. “It feels good. She trusted all of us and when we told her to go rip it … she did. She killed it.”

She set a personal best of 12.4 seconds in the 100-meter dash at a meet in Jackson and placed eighth in the event at the state meet, earning all-state honors.

Both relay teams she participated in also placed at the state meet.

“Going to state is amazing,” Allie said. “It’s a feeling you can’t even describe.”

Now in her senior year, she has set goals to beat some school records.

She’d like to achieve the 100-meter dash in 12.1 seconds or 12.2 seconds. She hopes to place higher at the state championship meet next year—ideally in the Top 4.

Years ago, she also set a goal to run in college.

And she’s now being recruited to do just that. She’s considering multiple schools and she plans to pursue a career in nursing.

“I want to go somewhere I feel valued as an athlete, on and off the track,” Allie said.

As her senior year kicks off, she’s gained profound new lessons in overcoming adversity.

“Track, for me, relates to a lot of things in life,” she said. “This injury is a good example. No matter what you do in life, there’s always going to be bumps in the road. But it’s how you react to those bumps.”

What is an STI?

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites that can be passed from one person to another during sex or intimate contact and most STIs are passed between sexual partners through oral, vaginal or anal sex – especially if you don’t use a condom.

If you are diagnosed with an STI you should avoid having sex with anyone until you have completed treatment. If you do have sex, the infection could be passed to your sexual partner.

General symptoms

If you have signs or symptoms of an STI it is best to go to a sexual health service to be tested in person.

Often people with STIs will get no symptoms at all or the symptoms will take a long time to show, meaning you could be passing infections on to other people without knowing it.

The only way to know you have an infection is to get an STI test.

STI symptoms vary from rashes, to pain when passing urine, discharge from the penis, vagina or anus, and lumps, or sores on the genitals and anus.

Some symptoms may also be internal – for example, pain inside your stomach, testes, pelvic or rectal area.

You can read more on types of STIs and their symptoms and treatment on the Sewwise website here.

What is an STI self-sampling kit?

Many sexual health services in the UK now offer free STI self-sampling kits for people who aren’t showing any symptoms or signs of a sexually transmitted infection (STI) and just want a routine check-up in the comfort and privacy of their own home.

These self-sampling kits can be used to test for the most common STIs, including chlamydia and gonorrhoea, as well as for other STIs such as syphilis and HIV.

The self-sampling kit will arrive in the post in a plain unmarked envelope or letterbox-friendly box and will have everything you need to take the samples, and a freepost return label to send them back.

You take samples yourself and then send them to a laboratory to be tested and get your results back in a few days.

Find out where to order free STI testing kits and find other free online services here.

When should I get tested?

It is a good idea to get tested, especially if you have recently changed partners or think you were exposed to an STI.

You don’t need to have lots of partners to get an infection, as many people with STIs have no symptoms and are unaware they’re passing on an infection to their sexual partner.

Regular testing for HIV and STIs is essential for good sexual health, and everyone should have an STI screen, including an HIV test, annually if having condomless sex with new or casual partners.

If you’re a student going to university for the first time or returning for a new year, it’s a good idea to get tested before you start having sex.

Women and other people with a womb or ovaries aged under 25 years who are sexually active should be screened for chlamydia on change of sexual partner or annually, and gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men should test for HIV and STIs annually or every 3 months if having condomless sex with new or casual partners.

If you have had sex without using condoms in the last 3 days and think you were exposed to HIV then don’t wait for a postal test – find HIV post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) services here or for out of hours support you can get PrEP from A&E.

What’s included in the STI self-sampling kits?

The contents of self-sampling kits will depend on the answers you give about the types of sex you have.

Kits will include a combination of the following:

• Blood sample – this will be used to test for syphilis and HIV. A lancet (a small needle) is used to prick your finger and you collect drops of blood into a tube.
• Anal, vaginal, and throat swabs – these will be used to test for chlamydia and gonorrhoea. It is a small cotton bud swab that you insert and rub inside the area for a few seconds.
• Urine sample – this will be used to test for chlamydia and gonorrhoea.

Your kit will come with instructions explaining how to best take the samples and some also link to video guides online.

Getting your test results

Self-sampling test kits must be sent back to the lab for analysis. There’s a separate labelled freepost laboratory return envelope or box included within your kit.

Your personal details will not appear on any of the samples or the freepost label, postal test kits are completely confidential.

Your test results will be returned as soon as possible, often by text message – usually within a few days. If you do have an infection, you will be advised of how to get treatment and further support.

How do I get treatment?

If you have an infection, you will get advice about treatment and further support. Usually, you will be advised on what treatment is needed or, when necessary, make an appointment at a local sexual health service for treatment.

If you are diagnosed with an STI, it’s advised that you get treatment as soon as possible to prevent passing it on to your sexual partners or experiencing any long-term effects.

It’s also important to inform recent partners that you have been diagnosed with an STI and that they should get tested.

Typically, treatment will include a course of antibiotics, and may require you to pick up your prescription at a local pharmacy or attend a sexual health service in person.

Taking care of your feet is essential for your overall health and well-being, but it’s something that many people overlook. Your feet are complex structures of 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles, ligaments, and tendons, and they work hard to support your body every day. It’s no wonder that they sometimes need a little extra care and attention. That’s where podiatrists come in.

Podiatrists are medical professionals who specialize in diagnosing and treating conditions affecting the foot and ankle.

Here are reasons why you should see a podiatrist

To Treat Foot and Ankle Pain

If you’re experiencing pain in any part of your foot or ankle, it’s worth talking to a podiatrist to get to the bottom of the problem. Podiatric assessment and treatment can help relieve pain and improve function. Common causes of foot and ankle pain include plantar fasciitis (heel pain), Achilles tendonitis (ankle pain), bunions, neuromas (nerve pain), and stress fractures. A podiatrist diagnoses the cause of your pain and recommends a course of treatment to help you find relief.

To Prevent Foot Problems from Getting Worse

If you have a foot problem that’s not causing pain, you might be tempted to ignore it. But even minor issues worsen over time if they’re not treated properly. For example, bunions are deformities that occur when the bones in your big toe joint move out of place. They can be painful, but even if they’re not causing discomfort, they will gradually worsen if they’re not treated. The same goes for hammertoes, heel spurs, and other conditions. Seeing a podiatrist Dallas helps you catch problems early on before they have a chance to worsen.

To Keep Your Feet Healthy as You Age

Your feet go through a lot of wear and tear over the years, leading to problems down the road, such as arthritis or loss of feeling in your feet due to nerve damage. Podiatrists can help you keep your feet healthy as you age by identifying problems early on and developing a treatment plan to prevent further damage. For example, podiatrists can prescribe orthotics (custom-made shoe inserts) to help relieve pain and prevent further damage to your feet.

For Athletes

If you’re an athlete, you put a lot of stress on your feet and ankles. Podiatrists can help you avoid injuries by fitting you for custom-made shoes and orthotics to support your feet. They can also treat injuries such as Achilles tendonitis, stress fractures, and plantar fasciitis.

To Improve Your Overall Quality of Life 

Many people don’t realize their feet’ importance until they start having problems with them. When your feet hurt, it is difficult to walk or even stand for long periods, which significantly impacts your quality of life. Seeing a podiatrist in Dallas regularly helps keep your feet healthy so you can stay active and do the things you love without pain or discomfort holding you back.

To Prevent Infections

While your feet may seem tough enough to withstand anything, they’re quite susceptible to infections, especially if you have diabetes or poor circulation. One common infection is athlete’s foot, caused by a fungus that grows in warm, moist environments (like sweaty shoes). If left untreated, an athlete’s foot leads to more serious problems such as blisters or ulcers. Another common infection is nail fungus, which usually starts as yellow or white spots under the tip of your fingernail or toenail (but it can affect any part of your nail). Nail fungus is difficult to treat on your own, so it’s best to see a podiatrist if you think you may have it.

To Prevent or Treat Diabetes-related Foot Problems

Diabetes can cause nerve damage, which leads to problems with sensation in your feet. This makes it challenging to discern injuries or wounds on your feet. Diabetic foot ulcers are common in people with diabetes and can lead to severe complications if left untreated. A podiatrist helps you care for your feet and avoid potential problems associated with diabetes.

To Prevent or Treat Ingrown Toenails

An ingrown toenail occurs when the edge of the nail grows into the flesh of the toe. This is often painful and even leads to infection if not treated properly. A podiatrist in Dallas prescribes medication or performs a “nail avulsion” procedure to remove the ingrown portion of the nail and allow it to grow back correctly.

To Improve Your Balance and Prevent Falls

As you age, your fall risk increases due to declining muscle mass, vision changes, and medications that cause dizziness or drowsiness. Falls lead to severe injuries, such as hip fractures or head trauma, so it is essential to take measures to prevent falls from occurring in the first place. A podiatrist helps you identify any issues with your feet that may contribute to falls and provide treatments to improve your balance and decrease your fall risk.

For Children’s Foot Health

Parents must take their children to see a podiatrist regularly, even if they aren’t experiencing foot or ankle problems. Children’s feet are still developing, so it’s essential to ensure they are healthy and growing properly. A podiatrist in Dallas can guide children’s foot health and offer advice on choosing the right shoes and socks and when to start wearing orthotics if necessary.

People with Flat Feet

Flat feet (also called “fallen arches”) are a condition in which the arch of the foot collapses, leading to pain and problems with walking or standing. People with flat feet are more susceptible to injuries, so you must see a podiatrist if you think you may have this condition. A podiatrist prescribes arch supports or custom orthotics to help treat flat feet and improve your symptoms.

For Pregnant Women

Pregnancy causes several changes in your feet, including swelling, flat feet, and heel pain. These changes are due to the extra weight you carry and the hormones that relax your ligaments and joints. A podiatrist helps you manage these changes and provide relief from foot pain.

Conclusion

Whether you’re dealing with a foot or ankle injury, struggling with a chronic condition such as diabetes, or want to keep your feet healthy, a podiatrist can help. Podiatrists are trained to diagnose and treat problems with the feet and ankles, so they can help you get back on your feet and improve your quality of life. If you think you may benefit from seeing a podiatrist, make an appointment with one today.

 

Of all the nicknames I have for my cat Calvin—Fluffernutter, Chonk-a-Donk, Fuzzy Lumpkin, Jerky McJerkface—Bumpus Maximus may be the most apt. Every night, when I crawl into bed, Calvin hops onto my pillow, purrs, and bonks his head affectionately against mine. It’s adorable, and a little bit gross. Tiny tufts of fur jet into my nose; flecks of spittle smear onto my cheeks.

Just shy of a decade ago, cuddling a cat this aggressively would have left me in dire straits. From early childhood through my early 20s, I nursed a serious allergy that made it impossible for me to safely interact with most felines, much less adopt them. Just a few minutes of exposure was enough to make my eyes water and clog my nasal passages with snot. Within an hour, my throat would swell and my chest would erupt in crimson hives.

Then, sometime in the early 2010s, my misery came to an abrupt and baffling end. With no apparent interventions, my cat allergy disappeared. Stray whiffs of dander, sufficient to send my body into conniptions mere months before, couldn’t even compel my nose to twitch. My body just up and decided that the former bane of its existence was suddenly totally chill.

What I went through is, technically speaking, “completely weird,” says Kimberly Blumenthal, an allergist and immunologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Some allergies do naturally fade with time, but short of allergy shots, which don’t always work, “we think of cat allergy as a permanent diagnosis,” Blumenthal told me. One solution that’s often proposed? “Get rid of your cat.”

My case is an anomaly, but its oddness is not. Although experts have a broad sense of how allergies play out in the body, far less is known about what causes them to come and go—an enigma that’s becoming more worrying as rates of allergy continue to climb. Nailing down how, when, and why these chronic conditions vanish could help researchers engineer those circumstances more often for allergy sufferers—in ways that are actually under our control, and not just by chance.

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All allergies, at their core, are molecular screwups: an immune system mistakenly flagging a harmless substance as dangerous and attacking it. In the classic version, an allergen, be it a fleck of almond or grass or dog, evokes the ire of certain immune cells, prompting them to churn out an antibody called IgE. IgE drags the allergen like a hostage over to other defensive cells and molecules to rile them up too. A blaze of inflammation-promoting signals, including histamine, end up getting released, sparking bouts of itching, redness, and swelling. Blood vessels dilate; mucus floods out in gobs. At their most extreme, these reactions get so gnarly that they can kill.

Just about every step of this chain reaction is essential to produce a bona fide allergy—which means that intervening at any of several points can shut the cascade down. People whose bodies make less IgE over time can become less sensitive to allergens. The same seems to be true for those who start producing more of another antibody, called IgG4, that can counteract IgE. Some people also dispatch a molecule known as IL-10 that can tell immune cells to cool their heels even in the midst of IgE’s perpetual scream.

All this and more can eventually persuade a body to lose its phobia of an allergen, a phenomenon known as tolerance. But because there is not a single way in which allergy manifests, it stands to reason that there won’t be a single way in which it disappears. “We don’t fully understand how these things go away,” says Zachary Rubin, a pediatrician at Oak Brook Allergists, in Illinois.

Read: What they aren’t telling you about hypoallergenic dogs

Tolerance does display a few trends. Sometimes, it unfurls naturally as people get older, especially as they approach their 60s (though allergies can appear in old age as well). Other diagnoses can go poof amid the changes that unfold as children zip through the physiological and hormonal changes brought on by toddlerhood, adolescence, and the teen years. As many as 60 to 80 percent of milk, wheat, and egg allergies can peace out by puberty—a pattern that might also be related to the instability of the allergens involved. Certain snippets of milk and egg proteins, for instance, can unravel in the presence of heat or stomach acid, making the molecules “less allergenic,” and giving the body ample opportunity to reappraise them as benign, says Anna Nowak-Węgrzyn, a pediatric allergist and immunologist at NYU Langone Health. About 80 to 90 percent of penicillin allergies, too, disappear within 10 years of when they’re first detected, more if you count the ones that are improperly diagnosed, as Blumenthal has found.

Other allergies are more likely to be lifers without dedicated intervention—among them, issues with peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, pollen, and pets. Part of the reason may be that some of these allergens are super tough to neutralize or purge. The main cat allergen, a protein called “Fel d 1” that’s found in feline saliva, urine, and gland secretions, can linger for six months after a cat vacates the premises. It can get airborne, and glom on to surfaces; it’s been found in schools and churches and buses and hospitals, “even in space,” Blumenthal told me.

Read: The next weird way we’re changing cats

For hangers-on like these, allergists can try to nudge the body toward tolerance through shots or mouth drops that introduce bits of an allergen over months or years, basically the immunological version of exposure therapy. In some cases, it works: Dosing people with Fel d 1 can at least improve a cat allergy, but it’s hardly a sure hit. Researchers haven’t even fully sussed out how allergy shots induce tolerance—just that “they work well for a lot of patients,” Rubin told me. The world of allergy research as a whole is something of a Wild West: Some people are truly, genuinely, hypersensitive to water touching their skin; others have gotten allergies because of organ transplants, apparently inheriting their donor’s sensitivity as amped-up immune cells hitched a ride.

Part of the trouble is that allergy can involve just about every nook and cranny of the immune system; to study its wax and wane, scientists have to repeatedly look at people’s blood, gut, or airway to figure out what sorts of cells and molecules are lurking about, all while tracking their symptoms and exposures, which doesn’t come easy or cheap. And fully disentangling the nuances of bygone allergies isn’t just about better understanding people who are the rule. It’s about delving into the exceptions to it too.

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How frustratingly little we know about allergies is compounded by the fact that the world is becoming a more allergic place. A lot of the why remains murky, but researchers think that part of the problem can be traced to the perils of modern living: the wider use of antibiotics; the shifts in eating patterns; the squeaky-cleanness of so many contemporary childhoods, focused heavily on time indoors. About 50 million people in the U.S. alone experience allergies each year—some of them little more than a nuisance, others potentially deadly when triggered without immediate treatment. Allergies can diminish quality of life. They can limit the areas where people can safely rent an apartment, or the places where they can safely dine. They can hamper access to lifesaving treatments, leaving doctors scrambling to find alternative therapies that don’t harm more than they help.

But if allergies can rise this steeply with the times, maybe they can resolve rapidly too. New antibody-based treatments could help silence the body’s alarm sensors and quell IgE’s rampage. Some researchers are even looking into how fecal transplants that port the gut microbiome of tolerant people into allergy sufferers might help certain food sensitivities subside. Anne Liu, an allergist and immunologist at Stanford, is also hopeful that “the incidence of new food allergies will decline over the next 10 years,” as more advances come through. After years of advising parents against introducing their kids to sometimes-allergenic substances such as milk and peanuts too young, experts are now encouraging early exposures, in the hopes of teaching tolerance. And the more researchers learn about how allergies naturally abate, the better they might be able to safely replicate fade-outs.

One instructive example could come from cases quite opposite to mine: longtime pet owners who develop allergies to their animals after spending some time away from them. That’s what happened to Stefanie Mezigian, of Michigan. After spending her entire childhood with her cat, Thumper, Mezigian was dismayed to find herself sneezing and sniffling when she visited home the summer after her freshman year of college. Years later, Mezigian seems to have built a partial tolerance up again; she now has another cat, Jack, and plans to keep felines in her life for good—both for companionship and to wrangle her immune system’s woes. “If I go without cats, that seems to be when I develop problems,” she told me.

It’s a reasonable thought to have, Liu told me. People in Mezigian’s situation probably have the reactive IgE bopping around their body their entire life. But maybe during a fur-free stretch, the immune system, trying to be “parsimonious,” stops making molecules that rein in the allergy, she said. The immune system is nothing if not malleable, and a bit diva-esque: Set one thing off kilter, and an entire network of molecules and cells can revamp its approach to the world.

I may never know why my cat allergy ghosted me. Maybe I got infected by a virus that gently rewired my immune system; maybe my hormone levels went into flux. Maybe it was the stress, or joy, of graduating college and starting grad school; maybe my diet or microbiome changed in just the right way, at just the right time. Perhaps it’s pointless to guess. Allergy, like the rest of the immune system, is a hot, complicated mess—a common fixture of modern living that many of us take for granted, but that remains, in so many cases, a mystery. All I can do is hope my cat allergy stays gone, though there’s no telling if it will. “I have no idea,” Nowak-Węgrzyn told me. “I’m just happy for you. Go enjoy your cats.”

Hume AI scored $3 million from Northwell Holdings, the investment arm of New York-based health system Northwell Health, to continue developing machine learning models that aim to understand speech and expression.

WHAT IT DOES

The startup builds natural language-understanding tools that take text, audio, video or images and try to capture meaning, as well as emotion and other expressions. According to the company, some of its tools are meant to note feelings like surprise, pain or sarcasm, or to capture vocal sounds like gasps, sighs and laughs. 

Hume AI plans to use the capital to refine these ML models for healthcare, including clinical research, patient screening and accessibility technology.

“Technologies that draw upon the latest scientific research to help us better understand not just what people say, but how they say it, have profound potential to benefit patients,” Rich Mulry, CEO and president of Northwell Holdings, said in a statement.

“We already see rising demand for this technology in treatment, clinical research, telehealth applications and more. To promote the careful development of these potentially transformative technologies, we are excited to launch our partnership with Hume AI through an investment that reflects our confidence in Dr. Alan Cowen and his groundbreaking team.”

MARKET SNAPSHOT

As physicians report increasingly high levels of burnout, some startups have pushed AI-backed tools to cut down on their administrative work. Abridge, which offers a tool that records, transcribes and organizes information gleaned from conversations with patients, recently raised $12.5 million in Series A-1 funding.

Another voice assistant for doctors, Suki, announced it scooped up $55 million in Series C funding late last year.

Meanwhile, Northwell has been expanding its investments in AI. Last year, the health system partnered with Aegis Ventures on a joint venture focused on the use of AI to address quality, equity and cost problems in healthcare. Hume is also a portfolio company of Aegis Ventures. 

In April the startup studio and Northwell announced the launch of Ascertain, a platform that aims to develop and commercialize healthcare AI companies.

Northwell also recently announced a partnership with Google Cloud to use cloud technology and AI to automate administrative workflows and identify patient risk factors for early intervention.

Today, four astronauts headed to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of SpaceX’s 5th Commercial Crew mission will begin a six-month venture into space-based research.

Launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the Crew-5 astronauts brought multiple research investigations sponsored by the ISS National Lab. 

Throughout the mission, the astronauts will support hundreds of research and technology development investigations, several of which are sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory.

One such investigation is from biotechnology company Lambda Vision – a company that’s previously launched investigations into space – whose goal is to create a protein-based artificial retina that can restore vision for patients with degenerative eye diseases.    

“LambdaVision hopes to demonstrate that manufacturing the artificial retina by building multiple thin layers of protein on a surface in microgravity improves its overall uniformity,” according to a statement. 

Additionally, a study from Los Alamos National Lab in collaboration with ISS National Lab Commercial Service Provider Rhodium Scientific accompanied the astronauts. This investigation evaluates gut microbes, looking more deeply into specific gut microbes that only change in space. They could affect astronauts and future space travelers. The project builds upon the team’s prior study onboard the space station.

Over the next six months, the astronauts will work on the above investigations and dozens of other projects going to the space station on NASA-funded Commercial Resupply Services missions. 

“ISS National Lab-sponsored projects set to launch on upcoming missions will leverage the orbiting laboratory for research in life and physical sciences, advanced materials and technology development,” according to a statement.

THE LARGER TREND

As space exploration increases, health and safety concerns are prevalent, especially regarding long space missions.

Earlier this year, Brain.space, the maker of an EEG helmet, emerged from stealth with $8.5 million and a plan to measure the neurological activity of three astronauts aboard the ISS to assess the effects of spaceflight on the brain. Each astronaut was to participate in experiments before, during and after the mission.

To study astronauts’ health and performance during commercial spaceflights, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine launched EXPAND (Enhancing eXploration Platforms and Analog Definition). This research platform collects data from flights and keeps it in a centralized database to improve the health of astronauts and find innovations for use on Earth.